In a commentary responding to a Washington Post editorial that said voter ID laws “inflict harm on democratic rule,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach argued that “photo IDs have become ubiquitous and unavoidable” and “it’s absurd to suggest that anyone is ‘disenfranchised’” by laws requiring photo ID to vote. He also repeated his claim that Kansas had “221 incidents of voter fraud” between 1997 and 2010 — without clarifying that these were claims of fraud, not actual violations. As for why there were only seven convictions, Kobach said it was because county attorneys didn’t have the resources to conduct investigations. But Sedgwick County officials reviewed the local claims on Kobach’s list and determined that nearly all of them were either groundless or were honest mistakes, not fraud. Meanwhile, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, urged the U.S. Department of Justice last week to investigate whether photo ID laws violate the Voting Rights Act.
“An attack on the right to vote is under way across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot,” wrote syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne. “If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach drafted Kansas’ new voting law and has been encouraging other states to pass similar laws, claiming that reforms are needed to stop voter fraud. But Dionne noted that “study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place.” Dionne added: “In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians. With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.”
When the Legislature passed new voting restrictions this past session, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said he hoped that other states would copy Kansas’ model. “That hope is already becoming a reality,” he bragged last week. Alabama’s governor signed a law that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. “I assisted Alabama’s legislative leaders in drafting the law,” Kobach said. He added: “Kansas has become the leader in stopping election fraud. I encourage every state in the union to join Kansas in this effort.”
Where is the conservative principle in requiring a photo ID to vote and a birth certificate to register to vote for the first time? “No one has justified the cost and inconvenience of this nuisance intrusion into our lives to our satisfaction,” wrote Ned Valentine, editor of the Clay Center Dispatch. Arguing that errors related to voter machines are a greater concern than noncitizen voters, he concluded: “Whatever happened to conservative passion to err on the side of individual freedom — to make government leave us alone and stay out of our lives? Should buying a gun now be easier than casting a vote? Put another way, should casting a vote be as difficult as buying a gun? It is no wonder the ranks of independent voters continue to swell with former Republicans.”
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach promoted Kansas’ new voter ID law in a commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal, noting how the law is stricter than any other state’s and how it was “drafted by my office.” Kobach wrote that “in Kansas, 221 incidents of voter fraud were reported between 1997 and 2010.” He didn’t clarify that these were claims of fraud, not actual violations. Sedgwick County officials reviewed the local claims and determined that nearly all of them were either groundless or were honest mistakes by voters and their families, not fraud. Kobach also emphasized how “fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government.” But whose fault it that? Kobach scares people into believing there is rampant voter fraud, then uses that fear to justify new laws.
A New York Times editorial noted how Kansas’ new law requiring a photo ID to vote and, starting in 2013, proof of citizenship to register is part of a GOP push supposedly aimed at stopping voter fraud that looks more like an effort to discourage voting among minorities and low-income citizens. “Tough luck if you don’t happen to have one (birth certificate) in your pocket when you’re at the county fair and you pass the voter registration booth,” the editorial said. “Or when the League of Women Voters brings its High School Registration Project to your school cafeteria. Or when you show up at your dorm at the University of Kansas without your birth certificate. Sorry, you won’t be voting in Lawrence, and probably not at all. That’s fine with Gov. Sam Brownback, who said he signed the bill because it’s necessary to ‘ensure the sanctity of the vote.’ Actually, Kansas has had only one prosecution for voter fraud in the last six years. But because of that vast threat to Kansas democracy, an estimated 620,000 Kansas residents who lack a government ID now stand to lose their right to vote.”
“We are deeply disappointed but not surprised by the governor’s actions,” Ernestine Krehbiel of Wichita, president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas, said in a statement about Gov. Sam Brownback signing a law requiring a photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register. Krehbiel said the law was a costly fix for a problem that doesn’t exist — voter impersonation at the polls. “This new law is a giant step backwards for voters’ rights,” she said.
Judging from the latest SurveyUSA poll, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, election night could be happy for Mayor Carl Brewer (70 percent, in photo) and Wichita school board candidates Jeff Davis and Sheril Logan (40 and 35 percent in their respective races). Though the candidates have to wait for the results, voters can have their say already by using the 15 advance voting sites through Saturday.
The state Capitol has seemed like a time machine this week. Lawmakers are finalizing a budget that will return base funding for schools to 1999 levels. The Legislature passed and Gov. Sam Brownback will soon sign abortion laws that seem aimed at transporting the state back to the early 1970s. And the Legislature passed voter ID and registration laws reminiscent of efforts in the 1960s and earlier to discourage minority voting. What’s next? Prohibition?
Polling indicates that most Kansans support requiring voters to show photo ID, so it isn’t surprising that voter ID bills have now passed the Kansas Senate and House with 36-3 and 78-36 votes, respectively. If Kansas must have such a law, though, the Senate’s version is preferred — it delays until 2013 the requirement that people show proof of citizenship when they register to vote for the first time, and it denies Secretary of State Kris Kobach the power he wants to file and prosecute cases of election fraud. Still, it’s too bad that lawmakers have been so unconcerned about the two best arguments against such legislation — that it’s unnecessary because voter fraud is a negligible problem in Kansas, and that it could deter eligible voters from voting and make turnout even lower than it already is.
Only about 18,000 Wichitans — or 9 percent of those eligible and registered to vote — are projected to cast ballots in today’s primary, our editorial today noted. How sad. And risky. The fewer the voters, the greater the possibility that the voting won’t be representative of the public at large — as only a small group of motivated people can sway results. That is particularly the case in the at-large race for Wichita school board, which has 11 candidates vying for three spots on the April 5 general election ballot.
It apparently doesn’t matter to most GOP legislators that there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Kansas. It doesn’t matter to them that groups involved in promoting voting and protecting the rights of minorities oppose requiring a photo ID to vote. It doesn’t matter that requiring a birth certificate to register to vote is likely to discourage voting. “A lot of people campaigned on this,” said state Rep. Scott Schwab, R-Olathe, chairman of the House Elections Committee. “To say, well, we’re not going to do it, I think, is a little bit of a stretch.” Only if facts and consequences don’t matter.
State lawmakers shouldn’t go along with Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s overreaching proposal to fight the negligible problem of voter fraud, our editorial today argues. But if they do, they must ensure their efforts don’t end up disenfranchising eligible Kansas voters. And they should ask some real questions about Kobach’s Secure and Fair Elections Act, including whether the state can afford it and whether the secretary of state needs a prosecutor’s powers.
“Why would someone who’s devoted his career to fighting illegal immigration want to become chief vote-counter for the state of Kansas?” asked a Washington Times story about Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach. For him, the answer is to fight voter fraud, and in a big way. “This will be head and shoulders above anything any state has ever done to secure the voting process,” he told the Times. “My hope is to create a model with regard to stopping voter fraud that can be used in other states, like we did in Arizona” with immigration. He said no state has done what his “groundbreaking” law would do, including requiring photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote, and streamlining enforcement such as by allowing the state as well as counties to prosecute voter-fraud cases. Sounds like an awfully big solution for a largely made-up problem.
Even though there have been only six convictions of voter fraud in Kansas since 2002 out of millions of votes cast, Kansas Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach argues that “one is too many.” But shouldn’t there be a cost-benefit analysis on Kobach’s plan to require photo identification for voting and a birth certificate for registering to vote? As an Eagle article Monday reported, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school estimated that 11 percent of registered voters don’t have photo identification cards. Many Kansans also don’t have readily available birth certificates. Before rushing to approve restrictions on voting rights, legislators need to carefully consider whether doing so is worth the cost of implementing those policies and the likelihood of disenfranchising eligible voters, given that voter fraud is a virtually nonexistent problem.
Out of 856,831 Kansas who voted in the November general election, there were only three cases of people who allegedly “double voted,” and no illegal immigrants tried to vote, state election officials said this week. So why is it again that Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach thinks voter fraud is a big problem?
There have been no headlines in Kansas charging that people voted fraudulently and stole the Nov. 2 elections. Even so, Kansas soon will have laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID at the polls. Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach has said he viewed his election as a mandate to combat election fraud, including by having measures ready for the 2011 Legislature. Gov.-elect Sam Brownback and many members of the GOP-controlled Legislature strongly support Kobach’s priorities. So do large majorities of Kansans, judging from a recent SurveyUSA poll sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12. In the survey, only 10 percent said voter registration shouldn’t require proof of citizenship and only 13 percent said voters shouldn’t be required to provide a valid photo ID at the polls. When it comes to implementing such legislation, though, two even smaller numbers become key — the 11 percent who said they didn’t have a copy of a birth certificate and the 1 percent who said they lacked a valid photo ID. Kobach, Brownback and lawmakers must ensure that their efforts to fight the perceived threat of voter fraud don’t disenfranchise eligible voters.
If GOP secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach (in photo) wanted to highlight a case of a dead man voting, he should have made sure his facts were right. Instead, Kobach focused Thursday on the case of the allegedly dead Alfred K. Brewer, whom The Eagle found to be alive, 78 and raking leaves in Wichita. Kobach is right that some deceased Kansans remain among the 1.7 million registered voters — an ongoing and acknowledged challenge for all election officials complicated by federal law. But as is his habit, Kobach overstates the threat that such deceased voters pose to the integrity of Kansas elections. And the remedies he proposes to address the overblown threat sound costly, complicated — and, frankly, designed to deter legitimate voters rather than encourage more to participate.
GOP secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach is part of a national chorus of conservatives warning of voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence of a widespread problem. Slate’s Christopher Beam pondered why anyone would try to vote fraudulently: “It would make no sense. Imagine what you’d have to do to perpetrate such a scheme. You’d first have to recruit a large number of voters willing to cooperate, each of whom would risk five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Then you’d have to get them all registered, which would require fake IDs and mailing address.” Beam went on: “At each point — registration, the database check, voting — they’d run the risk of getting caught. And the more people involved in the scheme, the more likely someone slips up. All it would take is one unlucky person for the whole plan to unravel. And for what? The prospect of winning a few extra votes for a candidate you support simply isn’t worth the risk of jail time.” Beam concluded: “There’s nothing wrong with preventing voter fraud, just as there’s nothing wrong with preventing alien attacks. First make sure the problem is worth your time.”
The biggest concern about requiring a photo identification card to vote is that it could disenfranchise citizens who don’t have photo IDs. So how many people could that be? The League of Women Voters estimates that 18 percent of Americans older than 65 years of age, 10 percent of people with disabilities and 15 percent of low-income voters don’t possess a photo ID, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. In order to exercise their constitutional right to vote, these individuals would either have to pay to obtain a photo ID, or the cash-strapped state government would need to pay to provide one to them. That’s quite a bit of expense and hassle to combat voter fraud, a virtually nonexistent problem in Kansas.
It’s disappointing that GOP gubernatorial candidate Sam Brownback endorsed GOP secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach’s campaign to stop voter fraud — a virtually nonexistent problem in Kansas. Brownback said he would work with Kobach, if they are elected, to require Kansans to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote and to show a photograph identification card when casting a ballot. “This will help reduce instances of voter fraud,” Brownback said — even though there have been only seven cases of alleged fraud referred to local, state or federal authorities in five years, and only one of those cases was prosecuted. What is particularly disappointing is that Brownback, who has spoken movingly in the past about not demonizing illegal immigrants, associated himself with Kobach’s fearmongering claims about illegal immigrants voting.
GOP secretary of state candidate Kris Kobach claims that saying voter fraud is not a significant problem in Kansas — which all the evidence supports — is like saying, as he put it in a debate last weekend, “Well, I live in a neighborhood, and we haven’t had any thefts for the past five years, so, you know what? It’s not a problem. I’m going to leave my doors unlocked at night. I’m going to leave the car in the driveway and leave the keys in the car.” No, it’s not like that. The state’s election system has safeguards that work well. Its doors aren’t unlocked. But to continue with the analogy, Kobach is like a door-to-door salesman trying to scare people with made-up tales of crime in order to sell them a home-security system they don’t need.
The silliness of the state’s GOP civil war this summer, in which every Republican seemed to be running against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was reflected in an anecdote about GOP secretary of state candidate Elizabeth “Libby” Ensley in a Kansas City Star editorial. “When introducing herself at The Star, she blurted out, ‘I’m pro-life.’ When asked what that had to do with the record-keeping office for which she was running, she answered, ‘Well, nothing, but people always seem to want to know.’”
Meanwhile, a Lawrence Journal-World editorial noted that at least the primary victors will get a chance to “turn over a new leaf” going into the Nov. 2 general election, concluding: “We hope they’ll take advantage of that opportunity to conduct campaigns that are civil and informative and steer clear of the mudslinging that has marred too many primary contests.”
Many people know about the Koch family connections to Americans for Prosperity, which is paying for some negative advertisements against Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita. But who is behind the shadowy Ohio-based group that is spending big bucks on negative television and radio ads against Schodorf and fellow GOP 4th Congressional District candidate Wink Hartman? Why would an out-of-state group care so much about whether Mike Pompeo wins Tuesday’s primary? Is its funding from Kansas donors? Unfortunately, voters can’t find out answers because campaign-finance laws don’t require such groups to disclose where they get their money.
In a commentary responding to a Washington Post editorial that said voter ID laws “inflict harm on democratic rule,” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach argued that “photo IDs have become ubiquitous and unavoidable” and “it’s absurd to suggest that anyone is ‘disenfranchised’” by laws requiring photo ID to vote. He also repeated his claim that Kansas had “221 incidents of voter fraud” between 1997 and 2010 — without clarifying that these were claims of fraud, not actual violations. As for why there were only seven convictions, Kobach said it was because county attorneys didn’t have the resources to conduct investigations. But Sedgwick County officials reviewed the local claims on Kobach’s list and determined that nearly all of them were either groundless or were honest mistakes, not fraud. Meanwhile, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, urged the U.S. Department of Justice last week to investigate whether photo ID laws violate the Voting Rights Act.
